Things are rarely as they seem, perhaps especially when religion and politics are involved. At least that’s what’s continually occurred to me as I have reflected during this “Fortnight for Freedom”[1] which U.S. bishops have asked American Catholics to participate in June 21 through the Fourth of July.

The fortnight of “study, prayer and reflection,” supposedly flowing from Pope Benedict XVI’s speech about religious liberty to American Bishops visiting Rome earlier this year, was more immediately caused by some bishops’ sense of the need for a dramatic response to the recent Health and Human Services directive that Catholic institutions such as hospitals and universities must include coverage for contraception in their insurance plans. I say “supposedly” about the Pope’s exhortation because I speculate, without any evidence, that it was in part or even largely written by the small group of bishops and their lay associates that later issued “Our First, Most Cherished Freedom.” For this lengthy “Statement on Religious Liberty”[2] was not the work of the entire body of U.S. bishops, though they later approved it, but of a committee of episcopal higher-ups, including Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Chaput and some nationally prominent and politically conservative lay advisers. It should, of course, be noted that Benedict himself has indeed long been concerned about threats to religious liberty, whether for Christians in places like Iraq, Egypt and China, or for those in the increasingly secularized countries of the modern West.

In this country, the issue of religious liberty – that is, the free exercise of religion for individuals and for religious institutions – has also long been a matter of serious concern. That is why it has been debated and adjudicated throughout our nation’s history. And why the Catholic bishops are today rightly concerned about possible government encroachments on that free exercise.

Though it will mean a longer than usual post, let me comment further on the seriousness (and complexity) of the issues involved in the Bishops’ Fortnight for Religious Liberty.

First and foremost, it seems to me that anyone who is not concerned about the protection of religious liberty – in this country and globally – either has their head in the sand or is (as are many secularists in this country) already committed to some form of religious intolerance. Yet most of us rightly protest religious intolerance and repression around the globe – whether in Muslim lands (often between different kinds of Muslims), Israel, Tibet, India/Pakistan, Sri Lanka … . The list could easily go on, even though I do not wish to equate all such situations. What is happening to Muslims and Christians in Israel and Palestine is not the same as what is happening to Jews and Christians in Iraq or to Muslims and Christians in China or between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria and in Egypt. Yet the connecting thread in all such cases is religious intolerance and often outright persecution, or at very least the absence of any serious respect for the free exercise of religion.

Nor is the problem only a “foreign” concern, since there continue to be cases of intolerance and questions about the exercise of religion in this country – involving Mormons, Jews, Catholics, Evangelicals, Muslims, Native Americans and so on. At times these are matters of clear bigotry in words and actions. But there have always also been legal questions about the extent and limits of the exercise of religious freedom – whether in matters of school funding, or public Christmas celebrations, or the use of certain drugs in some rituals, or the practice of public prayer during graduation ceremonies or football games.

As already noted, the immediate cause of the present bishops’ campaign to defend religious liberty has been the Obama administration’s mandate that Catholic institutions such as hospitals and universities – because they hire and serve large numbers of non-Catholics and are supported by significant government funding – must provide contraceptive coverage in employee health insurance programs. Since the mandates were first issued, there has been some back and forth between the administration and the Bishops – with Obama offering a compromise whereby the insurance companies (and not the institutions) paid for the objectionable coverage, and with the bishops responding that this was a distinction without a difference since it still involved providing the morally objectionable coverage in a Catholic institution. Thus at present there is a stalemate about how far government can go in mandating practices that the sponsoring religious body finds objectionable, and how far religious freedom guarantees non-participation in what is seen by many as a public good – in this case, contraception coverage for employees (and students and patients) desiring it.

Recently, a number of Catholic dioceses and universities have filed suit in the courts to force HHS to drop the objectionable mandates.

Yet, finally, contraception is not the crucial issue that has galvanized significant support for the bishops, both within important segments of the Catholic community (now including the Catholic Hospital Association, which previously had split with the bishops by quite publicly supporting the original passage of the Affordable Health Care Act), but also among leaders of other Christian and Jewish groups, many of whom have quite different beliefs about contraception (as well as about abortion and assisted suicide).

Rather what has brought these disparate groups together is deep concern about the government’s attempt to declare which institutions are religious “in the full sense” (like churches and lower-level schools) and thus deserving of a “religious liberty exemption” from such HHS mandates, and which institutions (like universities and hospitals) are not exempt because they employ and serve a larger public. Catholics and others who consider religiously affiliated institutions like hospitals and universities a key part of their mission reject the legitimacy of government directives and exemptions that attempt to define for religious people which of their works are “really” religious and which are not.

Of course, defenders of the HHS implementation of the Affordable Care Act argue that the free exercise of religion is often rightly limited by other matters of common or public good. And since the vast majority of Americans, including the vast majority of Catholics, do indeed regard affordable access to contraceptives as an important good, especially for women, they argue that the Catholic exercise of religious liberty, while appropriately safeguarded in houses of worship and in primary and secondary schools, should indeed stop at the doors of quite different kinds of institutions such as hospitals and universities – however much those institutions maintain their religious affiliation.

And so it goes. As in the case of the Supreme Court’s recent affirmative ruling about “the individual mandate” provision of the Affordable Care Act[5], we shall probably have to await the outcome of even more court cases (or possible administrative adjustments or legislative actions) before we will be able to come to some public settlement on HHS’s contraception coverage mandates. More generally, it looks like we are probably in for a series of such judicial or legislative determinations on any number of “religious liberty” issues before we attain some semblance of a “new public settlement” in this country with regard to the meaning of and limits to the constitutionally guaranteed free exercise of religion.

Meanwhile, of course, in the more overtly political arena, especially during the current campaigns, we can expect a continuing rise in rhetorical passion and polarization. Some on the right will insist that the Obama administration is engaging in a “war on religion” and will find much comfort in the Catholic bishops’ statements and actions. And some on the left will find clear evidence of a “war on women” in the bishops continuing efforts to change HHS mandates. And the rest of us will have to continue our own best efforts to cut through simplistic extremes and find better ways to think about these latest developments in our nation’s long history of adjudicating between legitimate concern for religious liberty and legitimate concern for other public goods.

[3] For some, perhaps even most, already understand the Fortnight as a not-too-subtle religious intervention in those campaigns.: http://blogs.denverpost.com/hark/2012/05/23/religion-partisan-politics-contraception-catholics-religious-freedom/276/

[4] six short essays in the June 14 issue of Commonweal: http://commonwealmagazine.org/bishops-religious-liberty

[5] As in the case of the Supreme Court’s recent affirmative ruling about “the individual mandate” provision of the Affordable Care Act: http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_20965644/supreme-court-health-care-ruling-fires-up-tea